“I know, right?” I exclaimed, way more excited than I expected myself to be finally talking shop with someone. “It happens to me all the time.”
“If I had to guess,” Caleb said, “Spellmasonry seems to be more of a contest of will over matter more so than the recipes and formulas of the magic-in-a-bottle of alchemy. It’s why I have trouble dealing with the will of the stone.”
I nodded. “I don’t think it’s a will all its own, though.”
“No?”
I pulled out my notebook, flipping through to a section of research I’d been compiling.
“I’ve been having the worst time getting anything I try to control to stay living, anything that’s larger than a brick, anyway. I can’t seem to fill my creations with my will, and they stop working. There’s a suggestion in Alexander’s notes that there are lingering spirits in this world that want a body to occupy, and they don’t care what form it is in. Again, my one success with it is brick-sized, so it’s not like I’m a master of anything.”
“You’re one up on me,” he said. “I haven’t tried animating much of anything, just because the few times I have, it’s been such a struggle to keep control, and I’m only dealing with a finite amount of time that I can keep it going before one of my concoctions run out. Besides, if it did actually work in any sustained way, I’m afraid of what might happen. Like if I left a construct active with something else ‘steering the ship,’ you know?”
I smiled, a wave of relief filling me just hearing I wasn’t alone in my own struggles with this. “I absolutely know.”
“Probably why I stick to alchemy,” he said with a grim smile, looking down at the broken table between us.
The curtain across the door leading into the store flew open, and Marshall stormed into the back room. His eyes went immediately to the two pieces of the caved-in table on the floor, and he shook his head.
“I thought I heard a crash, followed by an explosion,” he said, dropping to the ground by what remained of his gaming table. He scooped up tiny pieces of wall and figures from the pile there. “What the hell? Do you know how long it took me to build that dungeon?”
I gave a pained smile. “Sorry, Marsh.”
Rory came through the curtain next and saw Marshall kneeling there. She turned to Caleb and me, her face annoyed, and she started a slow, measured clap.
“That didn’t take long,” she said. “Good thing I had bet on chaos ensuing in under half an hour.”
“Things just . . . got out of control.”
Caleb laughed. “You can say that again. So much for my reverse engineering of the Kimiya. If I had used it on myself, maybe I would have exploded, too.”
“It’s progress,” I said.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
“Not just that,” I said. “I’ve still got the issue of how to make and control an army of stone men to deal with Kejetan.”
“We’ll figure that out, too,” he said, taking my hands in his, giving them a comforting squeeze. “Together.”
It felt terribly reassuring coming from him. I wanted to believe him and was slowly convincing myself of it when Marshall ahemed loudly next to us.
I turned to him. “I’m really sorry,” I said, snapping out of my moment of hopefulness, once more taking in the destruction Caleb and I had caused. “I’ll cover the damage.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” he said, looking up at me, upset. “That was our deal, remember? Not even twenty minutes old! The ink would still be wet!” His eyes fell back to the pile in front of him and ran his hand along the wood sticking out from beneath the maze and figures.
“I said I’ll cover it,” I repeated.
“That’s not the point,” he said, snapping. “This was my original gaming table. I’ve had it since I was seven. My precious.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but when no answer came from Marshall, I turned to Caleb. “Maybe this isn’t the best place for this.”
I hesitated for a moment as I pondered an alternative, walking over to the coat over the chair, grabbing it, and handing it to him.
“Maybe we should go somewhere a little more practical,” I continued, looking down at Marshall still picking through the mess on the floor. “Can I help you clean up?” I asked.
“Just go,” Marshall muttered. I didn’t feel I could argue.
Caleb took his coat and slipped it on. Rory looked at the two of us in silence as I headed for the curtained door, grabbing my fellow alchemist by his hand and dragging him along behind me despite the reluctance I felt in him.
“Come on,” I said to him. “I think Marshall may need a little time to mourn.”
Thirteen
Alexandra
Outside of Rory and Marshall, I hadn’t really brought many people into the confines of my great-great-grandfather’s art studio and library, and certainly not since any of the building’s trashings.
It had always been my own sacred space, even now after suffering at the hands of the new and darker Stanis. It still brought me comfort, and after pissing off Rory and Marshall at Roll for Initiative, I definitely needed a hit of that. And while normally I would have felt strange taking someone there, I found escorting Caleb into the confines of the damaged Belarus Building surprisingly comforting as well.
We came up the fire escape as I had since I was a little girl, and I threw open what remained of the French doors leading in from the terrace. The right one twisted off its hinge and fell to the stone of the terrace, several of its glass panels shattering.
“Ta-da!” I said, weakly, going in before I could further embarrass myself.
“Where are we?” Caleb asked, coming in behind me, the crunch of his footfalls echoing in the open space. “It looks like you brought me to a condemned building. Is this a crack den?”
“Home, sweet home,” I said, ignoring him and stepping across the library through the debris of broken statues and puzzle boxes. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
I slowed and turned to Caleb as he stopped in his tracks, realizing where he was.
“This is it,” he said, marveling. “This is actually Alexander’s library and studio.”
“Give the man a kewpie doll,” I said.
Caleb looked around, whistling.
“You really should clean more,” he said, picking up the base of one of the broken statues. Part of whatever it had been still had the figure’s legs attached to it. He ran his hand around the edge of its pedestal. “I recognize this.”
“You do?” I asked. “For real? I couldn’t identify that statue by just its legs, and I’ve studied my great-great-grandfather’s work most of my life!”
“Not the statue as such,” he said. Caleb held the base up, tracing the octagonal shape of it. The winged Belarus sigil with our initial was carved onto the bottom of the piece. “This design is stamped all over the guild hall.”
“This is where my great-great-grandfather did the greater part of his art and architecture work,” I said, “and this is the library where he accumulated much of his arcane knowledge.”
Caleb was like a kid at Disney World, but all that stopped for a moment, his face becoming skeptical. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked.
“I would think you’d love to be here,” I said.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Of course. But it’s awfully trusting of you, don’t you think? I mean, I know me pretty well, and I certainly wouldn’t trust me around all this.”
“First of all, I think if push came to shove and you tried anything, I could probably take you,” I said, meeting his eyes, my face serious.